Paper Cranes
by Starlit Skyline
Summary: It's over, though it never really is. She can fold as many origami cranes as she wants, but her wish isn't going to come true. Orihime just can't accept that. Implied UlqiHime


_**AN: Another UlquiHime, what can you do? This one focuses more on Orihime after the Winter War and the consequences and aftereffects it has on her. It's a bit strange, so I was a bit iffy about posting it, but I hope you'll enjoy reading it. On with the show!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own, big surprise.**_

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><p>Paper Cranes<p>

It's over. They'd won.

But it's not over and they'd lost too much to call it a true victory. Their triumph was just as hallow as the enemies they'd defeated... or maybe they'd become just like them, hollow and broken so much they couldn't even feel happiness now that the nightmare was finally over.

Aizen was dead, as were all the Espada though few Arrancar still remained. Orihime sincerely wished never to meet any of them, they'd only serve to remind her of those she couldn't save. Maybe because she still wakes up to tall, monotonous walls both distant and stifling at the same time. Maybe because her fingers are still inches from a pale hand that stretches towards her but never grasps it. Or maybe it's just her and her alone.

It's over, even though it never truly is.

.

The first time she dreams of it, it's like reality and the dream had switched places.

She's sitting on her couch in her brightly lit livingroom, but it's been replaced with a shadowed, cold chamber in the desert of nowhere and nothings. It's deathly quiet. She's alone and she knows no one is coming, no one but him. She's waiting. It's so quiet you could have heard a pit drop. There are no footsteps echoing out in the hall, yet still she waits for him, eternally patient or eternally damned, she isn't sure.

She's still waiting when she opens her eyes and finds she'd fallen asleep on her couch with the TV still on.

Orihime shakes her head, stretches, groans and heads for the shower. She has to get her mind off of things, this is no way to live. But she's been living it since the end of the Winter War, hasn't she? This is her life now.

It isn't all butterflies and sunshine and floating on cloud nine while her friends run off to fight monsters. She still worries, like she had back then, a lifetime ago. She still does nothing.

But things _have_ changed, because her world isn't limited to four walls and a hidden door anymore. It isn't limited to solitude and Ulquiorra's face and slight figure ghosting around her room.

That routine is broken now, and there's no going back.

Still, a month later and a part of her is still waiting for Ulquiorra to come into her room with one of her routine bland meals.

.

It's a bit like breaking a mirror or a priceless vase. You can piece it back together, but some pieces might be lost or smashed beyond repair. And the cracks would always be visible.

She watches her friends come to school day in and day out with no vigor or smile in their eyes. She watches the bags under their eyes grow and darken over time. She watches theM yawn in class and gaze tiredly – with such an old, ancient look about them – at the world around them. She watches them and does nothing.

Orihime knows this is something she won't be able to heal.

There are no wounds to reject and no missing limbs or life-threatening injuries. There are only nightmares and ghosts of the past come to haunt them and whisper and scream at them and demand why they couldn't have been saved. Orihime knows what her friends see when they close their eyes. There's no hope in them, in their dreams. Even though the nightmare's over now and there's no reason to fight any longer, it lingers and haunts them with it's aftermath.

Still, there is no hand reaching out for theirs in their dreams.

Still, Orihime watches as her friends come to school every day and smile and laugh and she knows she isn't the only one who's notice how hollowed that sound had become. But it comforting in a twisted way to know she isn't the only one putting up a charade.

Orihime knows they can't play pretend for much longer. She knows they can't keep telling themselves that they're alright even as they get worse. But she also knows how hard it is to accept the truth sometimes.

It was a bit like a picture, pretty to look at but with no substance, like a photograph or an old memory. It was quite the pretty picture they'd all been painting, full of smiles and normalcy and the warmth of halcyon days.

Days she'd said goodbye to long ago.

.

It's on one of those rainy days – when it's practically raining cats and dogs – that Orihime begins her trek back home, her umbrella held loosely in her arm. Her mind is on other things.

Her footsteps feel heavy as she trudges through the stormy night, but she doesn't care whether or not she's ruining her shoes by stepping through the many puddles littering the streets. She feels heavy and small, like she'd drowning and the rain isn't helping at all.

It doesn't cheer her up like usual, nor does it sooth her troubled heart.

It always served to remind her that no matter where they are, she would always be connected with her friends. She'd always be by their sides and they by hers. It had brought a warm feeling to her chest, like a second heartbeat besides hers.

Now, it only made her cold.

A sudden gust of wind stole her umbrella and surprised, she reached for it blindly. The wind blows it off, somewhere out of reach.

Shivering, she chases after it. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, there's a voice telling her it's already a lost cause. It had been for quite a while.

She doesn't know why she's thinking about this now, as the speck of deep, forest green disappears in the sea of sorrows and clouds.

She doesn't know if the wetness of her cheeks was due to the weather or her own tears.

.

"_What are you doing, woman?" a voice asks from behind._

_She jumps, startled, and turns from her post by the window "Oh, I was just thinking..."_

"_Of what?" he presses in such a tone that it makes Orihime wonder if he even wants to know._

"_Of my friends." she answers, unashamed._

"_I told you that it would be best to put them out of your mind. They might have come for you, but you shouldn't entertain false hopes."_

"_Why would you say that, Ulquiorra?" she asks, half exasperated, half wishing he won't answer "What's so bad about hoping?"_

"_Because, you cannot gain something just by wishing it would appear before you on a silver platter. You can't be saved if you are so weak you can't even save yourself." he looks her in the eyes and says "I'd have thought you would have learned that by now, woman."_

.

"What are you doing, Ishida-kun?" she asks her friend one day in the Handy Crafts club.

He turns to her and for a moment his hands obscure the little thing he'd been constructing. He smiles when he sees her. "Oh, Orihime, hey. I was just making an origami crane."

He spreads his fingers apart, holding up his hand to her. Her eyes grow wide. "Ah, it's so pretty!"

His smile widens "Want me to teach you?"

The question makes her fidget "If it isn't too much trouble...?"

"None at all."

They share a quiet moment before Ichigo saunters through the door. He snorts as he makes his way over. "Hey, Ishida, what's with the birds?"

Ishida just sighs in exasperation, as if asking himself why he's even trying anymore "It's _origami_, Kurosaki. Not that someone like you would know anything about such a beautiful and ancient art."

Ichigo ignores that last comment, his eyes on Uryu's desk, packed with the little paper birds "But why make so many of them?"

"Practice." Ishida answers without missing a beat.

Ichigo doesn't look convinced "You hadn't struck me as the superstitious type, Ishida."

It's Orihime's turn to frown. Confused, she asks "Superstitious?"

Both Ishida and Kurasaki look at her, surprised. "Sure, don't you know the legend? They say that if you can make a thousand paper cranes you get one wish."

.

That very night, Orihime sits at her low table with many square pieces of paper strewn all about the wooden surface.

Her fingers clumsily mimic the folds Ishida had shown her earlier that day. The first few times she doesn't succeed in making anything, and if she does it doesn't even resemble what it's supposed to look like. But she doesn't give, she'd promised herself she'd never do something like that again.

By the end of the night, sleep-deprived but happy, Orihime looks at the fruits of her labor. They aren't perfect or as straight as Uryu's had been, but Orihimre can't keep the smile off her face when she looks at the little origami cranes.

She counts four.

.

It's become a bit of habit to make at least ten cranes a day. As she crafts her creations, some small and some large, she wonders at nothing and everything.

She wonders if Ulquiorra has ever wished for something – not for Aizen, but his own desires. She wonders if he's ever missed anything and if he really doesn't want to remember his time as a human. She wonders if he'd ever had friends like hers and how terrible it would be to remember them all even if their centuries gone? She wonders how much pain he must have been in to become a Hollow and how he'd let go of his heart. She wonders at his tear-tracks and if the hole in his throath ever aches and longs to be fulfilled. She wonders why she so desperately wants it to be herself that fixes him.

She wonders at the cranes also, and why she makes them. She wonders at the special paper, the one decorated and implanted with hand-made drawings, she has yet to even touch.

It's covered with lush green leaves and dark, almost black branches that peaked thorough the foliage like horns. The background was white, but was almost blocked out by the intense green and the subtle yet glaring traces of black. One some branches, nested in a crown of leaves, Orihime could spot the white petals of flowers hiding in the thick maze of emeralds.

It's beautiful.

It reminds her of him.

It'll be her final crane.

.

Orihime sits in a sea of paper birds, bending and shaping scraps of paper and then setting them aside and grabbing a new one.

She's lost count of how many she's made, but she never seems any closer to her goal than she was four or a hundred cranes ago.

.

Orihime had once loved the rain. It connects the earth and the sky after all, two things that could never touch otherwise. In her opinion, it had always been beautiful. Symbolic, in a way.

She'd stayed after school that day, declining any offers from her friends to be walked home. They all had their own problems, their own ghosts to deal with, they don't need to baby her. Orihime doesn't need to be babied, she wants to be alone for a while.

It was funny really. She'd spent so much time in Hueco Mundo wishing for company, for human sympathy and touch, yet now that she had that back she wants to be alone again.

She wants to be alone in a cold world of eternal night and cruelty so she could find that spark again. She wants to find a human heart among all those stone faced monsters.

Hallows were people too, she'd learned long ago. But she'd managed to forget. She'd managed to forget even though her own brother had been turned into one. Arrancar were human too, once upon a time – why did it take her so long to realize that?

"_Do you know why Hollows go insane, woman?"_

She can't even remember which of her ramblings led to that topic, but it is now forever engraved into her brain-cells.

"_Huh?" she stutters, too shocked to say anything._

_Ulquiorra presses on regardless, emotionless "It's because they remember everything from their time as humans."_

_Orihime blinks and lets the information sink in, lets it click in the vast puzzle of the Arrancars. She gasps when the revelation hits her._

_She doesn't say anything for a while, but when she finally gathers enough strength, her voice is hesitant. "You mean... Arrancar... can't remember their past?"_

"_That is correct." his voice is indifferent as ever, but his eyes seem clearer somehow._

_Again, she hesitates. "Do you... miss them?"_

"_How can I miss something I've never had? I ceased being human when I became a Hollow, and I ceased being a Hollow when I became an Arrancar." Ulquiorra just looks at her, and she isn't sure if he's mocking her or stating a fact. _

_She doesn't say it, but she can't help but think how maybe he hasn't ceased to exist as any of those things, even if he doesn't realize it._

She wishes she'd said that now, but it's too late. The words mean even less to him now then they could have back then.

It's too late for her to do anything but feel guilt and regret.

Orihime stands up abruptly in the empty classroom, her fist clenched and shaking, and runs out to the hall, then down the staircases and out the door to the freedom of the outside world.

She runs out of the school courtyard, like she'd just made a break from some top-security prison and sprints down the wet pavement with a reckless abandon. She doesn't care that she left her jacket at school or that her uniform is getting soaked in the rain, nor does she care her favorite green umbrella – a new one she'd bought recently – was left behind as well. She runs, spins, stumbles and rights herself as she hurries along in some sort of bizarre dance.

The cold soaks into her uniform, into her hair and slowly, her very bones.

The raindrops felt numb on her skin.

.

In her dreams, he's always reaching for her, as he had once in reality – during the very last moments of his existence in it.

Sometimes, he runs to him, calls his name and clutches at him – and _feels_ as his body deforms and withers away into grains of sand. They slip past her fingers without effort, as though she though she was never truly meant to hold it.

Sometimes, she reaches out and this time, their hands connect. They link their fingers or press their palms together and just when Orihime thinks she's finally reached him, the realization strikes her that there's nothing there but air.

On the worst nights, she does nothing but stare at her ceiling after waking up with a start, covered in sweat and panting and bone-weary. She just stares. Nothing more. Nothing, even as he withers away into dust before her eyes.

On those nights, she doesn't wake up gasping or sobbing or in tears – the only way to describe the feeling would be _hollow_.

The cycle repeats itself, over and over again.

All her dreams fade with the morning's light, and she's left with nothing but ashes and cold hands ghosting over hers.

.

She can't find the paper.

The number's stuck on 999 and she can't find a damn scrap of paper in the whole house.

.

Tatsuki looks bewildered after she barrels into the other girl's house, but Orihime doesn't stop to apologize or to even notice anything else but the goal in mind.

After a hasty explanation and various drawers being flung open, Tatsuki hands her a used sticky note. She doesn't have anything else, but for Orihime it's more than enough.

Her hands repeat the familiar motions even though her fingers shake so bad she fears she might rip the little scrap of paper apart. She manages to finish her crumbled crane and cradles it to her chest with a smile that hadn't been so bright in months.

She cradles the crane, this little flimsy thing made of cheap paper that crinkles under her grip. She clutches at the little flimsy thing full of hopes and dreams, wishes with all her heart and all her soul for just a chance to make everything right. Just one second chance at that one, single moment.

Nothing happens.

.

Orihime stares at the sky with empty eyes.

She's laying in the grass on the shore of the river, watching the storm brewing above. She knows she should probably find shelter, but she doesn't have the will to stand up right now.

Orihime wants to drown in the rain.

The rain is beautiful, it connects the earth and sky and, just for a moment, lets them touch. The rain is also a sad thing, it's the sky crying out and reaching in vain for the earth below, only to have to let it go just as their fingertips brush. The earth is left muddy and lush from the downpour, striving in its touch.

Orihime wants to drown in the rain.

Her hand stretches out on its own accord, reaching for the sky as the last ounce of clear blue is swallowed by the ash-colored clouds. It stays upright for a moment longer – her hand – reaching for nothing, before Orihime lets it fall back to the ground.

Suddenly she wants to cry, but the tears aren't coming and the raindrops are already falling on her face, as though they were the tears of another. The sky was shedding tears he never could – would – have, at least that's what Orihime wants to believe.

Orihime is so absorbed in her morose thoughts she doesn't even hear the footsteps until they reach her.

"C'mon Orihime, it's gonna rain any second now." the voice of her best friend resounds. Tatsuki looks worried, even upside down, as she holds out a hand for Inoue to take and Orihime lets out a laugh that sounds choked even to her own ears.

She stares at Tatsuki's offered hand, so different from the one that reaches for her in her dreams, and hesitates a moment longer before grasping it. As Tatsuki pulls her up, Orihime feels numb, but nonetheless deafly follows her friend up to the road and towards home, so that there's nothing left of them but the drizzle of rain a pair of fading footprints on the ground.

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><p><strong><em>Comments are greatly appreciated!<em>**


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